With an abundance of sweet potatoes and brussels sprouts in local Farmers Markets, there’s no better way to use the season’s bounty than this hearty chili, a perfect dish for cold nights.
“If you can make a batch of cookies, you can can.”
If the idea of home canning leaves you in overwhelming, uncomfortable culinary territory, take heed of the above advice from Linda Amendt, a woman on a mission to help us rediscover the joys of homemade preserves. Winner of over 900 awards in state fair culinary competitions and author of two cookbooks — Blue Ribbon Preserves: Secrets to Award-Winning Jams, Jellies, Marmalades & More and 175 Best James, Jellies, Marmalades and Other Soft Spreads – Amendt focuses on keeping things simple and satisfying.
Here are four starter tips from Amendt on getting started in canning homemade preserves, the easiest route for novice canners.. While the summer fresh produce season is – sniff – behind most of us, fresh apple cider is still available and makes a great beginner project (recipe after the jump) and creative holiday gift. Read the rest of this entry »
Bake this quickbread the night before for a special breakfast treat, or serve it after dinner with tea or hot chocolate. The recipe is vegan, but omnivores will enjoy it just the same.
Today we’ve eaten the last of our sorrel until spring.
Where I grew up we had traveller families who passed through our village several times a year, and when they did, their children would join us in school for a few weeks. As they walked home, the traveller kids regularly foraged for food: hazelnuts in early autumn, mushrooms from early spring to late summer and sorrel from late spring. Many of us learned a little about free wild food from their visits, and while I’d never go mushrooming on my own, because I’m not confident enough about my identification of various fungi, I still forage for a wide range of foods: especially sloes, hazelnuts and elderberries. Read the rest of this entry »
This Harvard educated Venture Capitalist-Turned-Chef is the prolific powerhouse behind Behind the Burner.com, a cooking wonderland dedicated to bringing savory secrets of fine food preparation from renowned restaurants around the world to your table, one gourmet recipe at a time.
I had the pleasure of speaking with Divya and learning more about the brains, the bites and the business. And she’s as talented in the board room as she is in the kitchen, with an infectious energy and passion that, like the food she and her chefs prepare, leave you yearning for more.
This will be the first in a series of posts featuring Behind the Burner chefs, organic cooking ideas and special offers for the Eat. Drink. Better. readers, so be sure to check back each week for the latest in edible enjoyment.
My CSA box this week contained sweet potatoes…lots of sweet potatoes. The ugliest sweet potatoes you’ve ever seen.
This is what a sweet potato looks like when it’s been damaged by voles. Pretty ugly, eh? But other than the obvious cosmetic damage, there’s no harm to the sweet potato — you can trim off the damaged parts and use it as usual. Vole-damaged sweet potatoes even store just as well as perfect specimens. But of course a lot of people would be put off by the visual and pass these up in favor of more perfect-appearing sweets. So when you’re hitting the farmers’ markets at the end of the season, if you see some ugly sweet potatoes cheap, snap ‘em up! They’re a bargain, and you’re rewarding a farmer for using organic methods.
I also had some excellent-looking young spinach in this week’s CSA box, and a few onions. I’d picked up some wonderful linguica from a local sausagemaker a few weeks earlier, and I always keep chicken stock in my freezer. It’s a blustery day here in Southwest Ohio, with the first sleet of the season. Soup seemed like the perfect choice. So I made one of my favorite rustic autumn soups: Linguica, Sweet Potato, and Spinach Chowder. Read the rest of this entry »
This may sound egotistical but I know a LOT more than you do about cooking a turkey.
Allow me to explain…
Back in 1999, when I was teaching at the California Culinary Academy, I was involved in both the cooking and the tasting of the San Francisco Chronicle Food section’s Turkey Challenge. Over a two week period, we cooked 28 turkeys to find the best method of producing a plump, juicy and flavorful bird.
We brined some turkeys and left some uncovered overnight in the refrigerator. We roasted some, barbecued others, deep fried one and even smoked another. We cooked some breast up and some breast down. Some we basted and some not, some were covered in the oven and some not. Some were stuffed and some not. We cooked turkeys at an oven temperature varying between 325º to 450ºF. Are you getting the picture?
We’ve all had pumpkin pie and it seems everyone has a favorite recipe or variation of it, but what about when you want to eat seasonally, but aren’t craving sweets? Here are 10 pumpkin recipes to satisfy your savory side and take advantage of the current farmers market bounty.
Thanksgiving is only two weeks away. I always host the holiday at my house, and I always cook a turkey that is far larger than our needs for our feast. Why? I want the leftovers. Since cooking a turkey is time consuming, not too many of us do it outside of our holiday dinners. By planning ahead by buying a really big turkey, I can have enough leftovers to make some of my family’s favorite dishes in the weeks after Thanksgiving without having to take the time to cook another turkey.
What do I do with the leftovers? My husband’s favorite is the Thanksgiving Leftover Sandwich. Most people have their own variation of the sandwich, but our combination is cold turkey, cranberry sauce, and stuffing on toasted white bread slathered with mayonnaise. My husband introduced me to this when we were dating, and although it sounded unappetizing at first, I was quickly converted.
Another of my favorite leftover turkey dishes is to make my turkey pot pie filling, but instead of putting it into a pie crust, I serve it over biscuits.
Here’s my recipe for Turkey Pot Pie over Biscuits:
Granted, winter squash isn’t typical breakfast fare. But when you’re in need of a creative new way to use that pile of butternut, acorn or any other varietal, try this out-of-the box quiche.
For quiche newbies, this is an ideal, simple recipe to start with since there is no crust. Plus it is an easy recipe to experiment with as pretty much any type of winter squash will work, including pumpkin. I’ll often steam several cleaned and cut-up squash at once, puree in the food processor and freeze in one-cup allotments in plastic bags, making for easy meal prep.
Recipe after the jump . . . Read the rest of this entry »
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